


almost legends

by Irratia



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, fun times, like actually sob, this made me sob while writing, yeah this is sad as fuck i hurt myself with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:53:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28676985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irratia/pseuds/Irratia
Summary: He knows that, objectively, that he has it better than the rest of them. His parents don’t really care all that much about anything he does, so he has the freedom to do what he wants. His parents really don’t care all that much about anything, so he doesn’t have to worry about them screaming their throats raw at each other, or them not looking at him anymore, or them looking too sharply.He watches Reggie, who tenses up everytime they hear a car slow down in front of Bobby’s house around five pm.He watches Alex, who doesn’t like too long silences who and starts rambling immediately when he thinks they’re being quiet for too long.He watches Luke, who still cries at night, silently, thinking Bobby won’t hear, who sneaks away to see his mom, even from afar.Bobby watches all of them, and helps them the best he can, providing them a safe place to sleep and practice and opening his arms without questions, and he thinks about how glad he is that his parents simply don’t care, so he doesn’t have to deal with any of that.
Relationships: Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Rose
Comments: 21
Kudos: 63





	almost legends

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello, welcome to me being sad. :)  
> Genuinely don't know why I wrote this because it fucking hurt, but here I am, and I'm not gonna be sad alone so yeah. The last 1000/1500 words or so where written while I was sobbing so huge fucking shoutout to Meg (A_Tomb_With_A_View) for beta reading/editing this, thank you and ily!  
> Hope you enjoy!!

Alex thinks he’s the mom of the group, but Bobby knows he isn’t.  
Alex may carry around a bottle of Ibuprofen for Reggie’s constant migraines, bandaids for them all, spare guitar picks, some fidget toys, and Bobby’s epi-pen, but he’s still not the mom of the group. Bobby is.  
He’s the one that makes sure Luke has a blanket over his shoulders when he falls asleep writing lyrics again, and that there’s always a spare room wherever they go in case Alex panics, because he hates nothing more than to show his anxiety in front of other people, and he’s the one that makes sure Reggie doesn’t forget everything he owns, anywhere he goes.  
It’s his garage all three of them have been sleeping in for the majority of last year, his couch (even if Luke has claimed it as his own) that serves as their bed, for all of them, because it’s not like he really wants to stay in a house that reeks of cold smoke and stale beer.

He knows, objectively, that he has it better than the rest of them. His parents don’t really care all that much about anything he does, so he has the freedom to do what he wants. His parents really don’t care all that much about anything, so he doesn’t have to worry about them screaming their throats raw at each other, or them not looking at him anymore, or them looking too sharply.  
He watches Reggie, who tenses up everytime they hear a car slow down in front of Bobby’s house around five pm, and who creeps away when Luke and Alex have an argument, who flinches when someone accidentally drops a glass or shuts a door too hard.   
He watches Alex, who hates watching the news and who meticulously avoids any and all crosses and churches, who doesn’t like too long silences who and starts rambling immediately when he thinks they’re being quiet for too long, and who’s fidgeting gets more and more aggressive when they don’t talk for whatever reason, until someone takes his hands.   
He watches Luke, who still cries at night, silently, thinking Bobby won’t hear, who sneaks away to see his mom, even from afar, who loves so fiercely and throws himself into their music harder than ever after the break with his parents.   
Bobby watches all of them, and helps them the best he can, providing them a safe place to sleep and practice and opening his arms without questions, and he thinks about how glad he is that his parents simply don’t care, so he doesn’t have to deal with any of that.

Sometimes he thinks he actually wants to finish high school, but then Luke comes running into their studio with a new, better gig, or they workshop a new, fucking amazing song, and he forgets that sentiment. And it’s great. He loves his guys, and he loves the band and he loves touring and performing, the highs of singing and playing on stage and the hugs and happy laughter afterwards. It starts paying off, the Orpheum coming closer and closer into their reach.

They work tirelessly, all of them, and Bobby’s the one who makes sure there are enough lotions and ointments stocked in the studio and packed in the old, beat up, van he drives them to their gigs in, so they can take care of Alex’s calloused hands and Luke’s, Reggie’s and his raw and almost bleeding fingertips.  
He’s the one who makes sure they eat at least one vegetable or fruit per day, and that they don’t don’t live solely on instant ramen and meals they can make in the studio’s dingy microwave. It isn’t alway easy, because they’re still not making that much money, and he has to tiptoe through the house when there’s a half empty vodka bottle dangling from his father’s hands, and two empty bottles of wine next to the sleeping form of his mother on the kitchen table. But he knows where they put the cash, and he knows they don’t know, or don’t care, if there’s a twenty dollar bill missing every few weeks and that’s enough to keep his boys and himself in good health, so it’s worth going into the house and almost choking on the smell of burned out cigarettes and alcohol that has seeped into the carpet years ago, which makes getting rid of the smell basically impossible.   
It’s all worth it, he tells himself, because he gets to make music and travel and live with his best friends, and if he has to be the one to put a bit more work in, then so be it. 

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when they’re all piled on the couch, _somehow_ , and the other three are asleep, he feels a tiny bit hurt that they don’t acknowledge him as the mom friend. It’s stupid, and he knows, in theory, that they don’t love him any less than they love each other, but he puts in so much effort, and still it’s Alex, who is the ‘mom’. He doesn’t even understand why it upsets him, because Alex always offers him a tired smile and a whispered ‘thank you’, when Bobby is the one to sit with him during a panic attack. And Luke always grins at him and rolls his eyes when he orders them all to eat their veggies, and Reggie always turns to him first when he’s having a bad day or something reminds him of the household he had to call home for way too long.

They don’t say it, they show their appreciation, and isn’t there a saying that showing is more important than telling? But Bobby likes hearing it as well, because sometimes verbal confirmation just really cements something.   
He sometimes worries that he’s the expandable one in Sunset Curve, because he doesn’t have the best singing voice, and they can always find another rhythm guitarist, and then he feels guilty for thinking that way, because his boys are not those kind of people and he just knows they would feel hurt by him saying something like this.   
And Bobby sometimes worries about the future, because what if they don’t magically take off at some point, and don’t become popular enough to make an actual, good living off of the band? None of them have graduated high school, none of them have the kind of support system from their families that could catch them if things go wrong.  
And what if they do take off. What if they become famous? There are too many stories about fame getting to people’s heads and he’s scared of something like that happening to them. He’s scared one of them will get addicted to drugs, or become like his parents, and break the band apart, or that there will be too many fights for them to continue to like each other.

It’s quiet moments of solitude when he feels like that, and worries, but he keeps reminding himself that it won’t happen. He’ll make sure it won’t. And, after all, they have their lives ahead of them to figure it out.

The night they’re set to perform at the Orpheum, all of these worries are forgotten. Their soundcheck goes amazingly well, Luke’s energy and joy radiating from him as he belts their songs into the mics, Alex on fire behind the drums, Reggie in constant motion really give just a taste of what's to come.  
Their energy level is already at 100%, and Bobby knows that with the club packed full with fans and executives, people who might be able to decide their future, they’ll still manage to double it.   
So he takes the chance to talk to the extremely pretty woman who’s wiping down tables, even if the others try their best to embarrass him. She just smiles at him, her big brown eyes kind and amused, as they watch the others saunter out, content with themselves.

“So, you guys have been friends long before the band was a thing, I’m guessing?” she asks, while Luke lets out an excited shout, before disappearing backstage with Reggie and Alex. “Be back in half an hour, then we’ll be legends!”

Bobby snorts. “Yeah, the four of us have known each other since we were eleven, and all of us got detention.”

He’d gotten into a fight, back then, because some bully had taunted a girl in his class for wearing glasses. Apparently punching people in defense of others was not noble, or a good thing to do. So he’d appeared in the room, still fuming, to see three other boys sitting there, in various states of mind.  
Luke had been quietly sniffling, because he was scared of what his mom would say if she found out he’d gotten detention for skipping class to play one of the school’s guitars behind the gym. Alex had looked close to throwing up, he’d gotten detention because he hadn’t wanted to do his presentation in biology, somethin Bobby had actually seen going down. He knew Alex Mercer because he was really, really smart, according to his test scores, but really, really bad at giving presentations. And Alex Mercer had just refused, begging to just do it after class. Their teacher had glared and raged until she’d given him a bad grade and detention to make up for it. Alex hadn’t cried, but he’d looked very close to it.   
Reggie had been in detention for not paying attention, and not doing his homework, because he just could not understand letters, he said. His teacher hadn’t believed him and put him in detention.   
Their merry band of unfairly treated kids had sat in silence for five minutes, until Reggie had asked if any of them wanted to hear facts about puppies, and then they’d bonded over music, and all of a sudden Bobby had three more friends that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

He tells Rose this, while she continues to work, and she smiles and nods, and laughs. He knows, logically, that she’s probably a bit too old for him, but she’s just nice to talk to, and he never really liked the street dogs they got anyway.  
And so they talk. About music, about being in a band. Bobby vows to drag the other three to one of Rose’s concerts soon, and she laughs and makes him promise to honour her when they get famous.

Time flies by, and Bobby starts getting antsy. They should be back by now, he thinks after half an hour. They usually don’t take long. They’re usually on time.  
They probably got carried away, he thinks, and tries to assure himself. He sees the way Rose tenses a bit as well, when they hit the forty minute mark. At this point Bobby has started pacing. He decides to go looking for the idiots, because maybe they just got sidetracked (it wouldn’t be the first time). There’s an uneasy feeling in his stomach, and his shoulders are tense, but it’s fine, it _has_ to be. Tonight is the night of their lives, nothing bad is allowed to happen.

The sirens of the ambulance can be heard even inside the still empty club. A big, heav< block of ice drops into his stomach, and he struggles to breathe for a second.  
Forty-five minutes.  
They’ll be fine.  
Ambulances drive around the city with their sirens blaring all the time.

He still makes his way outside, just to make sure.

Bobby doesn’t remember much of that night, after the cold evening air hits him, but he remembers seeing the ambulance by the street dog vendor, and the three stretchers with his best friends on them.   
There’s a vague, hazy memory of him begging to get into the ambulance with them, and trying to grab onto one of their hands because they are _still_ , why are they so still? The paramedics pushing him away, expressions sorrowful. Somebody holding onto him, while he cries harder than he ever has, sobs echoing in the alleyway, the sounds of the sirens long gone.

The night they played the Orpehum was supposed to change their lives. It did. It changed his forever, and ended his three best friends'. 

Bobby’s world comes crashing down around him in a matter of seconds, and he’s left sitting amongst the debris unable to lift as much as his head. There’s pain. So much of it. It’s grief, he knows it is, but it feels bigger than that. It feels like someones taken his heart and squeezed it so tight it’ll never return to what it once was.  
Just thinking about the next day hurts beyond anything he’s ever known, because he won’t wake up smothered by Reggie’s arm with Luke snoring right into his ears. There won’t be hours of rehearsals and stupid dares, and he won’t go swimming in the ocean at three am during a full moon ever again, because that’s the dumb shit he did with his friends, and now they’re gone and have left him behind.

The first week after it happens is foggy. He’s called into a hospital to identify them, because the only people that answered the phone calls were Luke’s parents. He has to see them, the three of them pale and lifeless, there but not them, and confirm that the bodies on the table once held life and love and laughed with him and patted him on the back. That they were the people he wrote songs with, and poured his heart out with, who he’d planned to dedicate his life to. 

Rose waits for him, in front of the hospital. He’s stumbling, barely being able to see because his eyes burn and there are tears on his face and his throat is clogged and everything hurts. She doesn’t say anything, just pulls him into a long hug and leads him away.

Rose is the one who gets him through the worst of it. She doesn’t let him go anywhere, not home, because he can’t. There’ll be one of Alex’s shirts, and Luke’s notebook will still lie open on the table, and one of Reggie’s stuffed animals will sit on the couch to greet him.  
Instead she leads him to her apartment that she shares with her bandmates, and she settles him in, and the four of them, all women, crowd around and do their best to help.

But it’s hard, on all of them, and in the moments he can see through his grief long enough, he feels guilty for eating the food they shove at him, and hogging their couch, because sleeping is the only thing he can really do right now without wishing to die as well.

He attends their funerals. So does Rose.  
She stands next to him, crying with him at Luke’s funeral, where Mitch and Emily ignore him.  
They cry together at Alex’s grave, who doesn’t even get a proper service, and not a look back from his parents.  
She snaps at Reggie’s parents, when they continue to argue over their 17 year old son's grave. Bobby is immeasurably thankful for her, when she stays with him, and holds him while he sobs over all three of his friends, the evening after Reggie’s coffin is lowered into the ground.

“I think you should sort through all of your stuff,” she suggests, softly, in a moment when his body isn’t in the tight grip of painful sobs. “I’ll help you with it.”

And she does. It takes a long time, and it _hurts_ , but they sort through the studio.  
They put all of the boys’ favourite clothes away, donate the rest. They pack up memories and cry, because Bobby can’t stop himself from telling stories about the others. They pack up the studio, and when they’re done Bobby takes one of Reggie’s necklaces and puts it around his neck, and slips one of Alex’s rings onto his finger, and grabs one of Luke’s guitar picks.

“You should take these,” Rose says quietly, gesturing to the notebooks upon notebooks they all have filled with arrangements and songs. “I don’t think they’d want them to go to waste.”

And so Bobby packs the songs into his backpack. His parents aren’t home, or they aren’t awake or sober enough to care about his being there.

“I don’t want anything of this life anymore,” he tells Rose, standing in the studio. His voice is hoarse. “I don’t want it.”

“Then I’ll help you change it.” she says. She hugs him, and leaves him to himself for a few minutes.

Bobby exhales a shuddery breath, and turns, slowly, taking in the giant Sunset Curve banner, and Reggie’s bass. Their couch. Alex’s drums.

“Hey boys,” he starts. “I… miss you all. So much. I can’t even put into words how much I miss all of you. I know it wasn’t an easy way to go for you, that it was quick but painful, but I pray to every God in the world that you’re all in a good place now.”

He takes a shuddering breath, feels the tears hot on his cheeks, brushes them away before continuing.  
“Luke, buddy, I hope you still get to make music. That you get to play guitar and write songs all day long without getting tired, so the others don’t have to hear you complain. And I hope you all get to perform them still.”

A sob makes his way out of his throat and he clutches at the necklace that belonged to Reggie, promises himself to keep it as a reminder.  
“Reg- I hope there are puppies wherever your are. Lots of them. And that you don’t have to read ever again, and that you get all the pizza you want. That you can sleep all the way through the night, and that you’re happy, and annoy Alex with weird facts for me.”

He has to pause longer now, his breaths hurting and his vision so blurry he can barely make out shapes.  
“Alex, I hope there are no homophobes, but if there are, that you get to punch them without getting in trouble. I hope you can still play drums if things get to be too much, and that you remember to be proud and-”

It takes Bobby minutes before he can speak again.

“I hope you’re all happy. I really do. I hope you’re all happy and safe, and that you wait for me, and that you know I loved you. I still love you all, so much. It hurts. And I sometimes wish I didn’t love you all so much because it would be easier now, but I know that’s not actually true, because you have given me so much joy, and fun, and love while you were still here. I hope you wait for me, because if you do, I promise I’ll find you one day.”

Rose finds him, ten minutes later, crying again.  
“Let’s go home.” she says, and leads him away, and strokes his hair and kisses his forehead. “We’re going to get through this, I promise.” 

And somehow, they do. It’s hard, it’s so incredibly hard. But they do.  
Bobby changes his name, because he can’t bear the questions some reporters ask him about the boys. He doesn’t want to be reminded of it. He tours with Rose, playing with her for a bit. She falls head over heels for the tour photographer, Ray, and Bobby is happy for her. She helps him record one of their songs. Crooked Teeth is accepted by a record label that they could have only dreamt of, and Bobby is determined to get all of their songs out there. His boys deserve to have their music known all over the world.

All of their songs get produced, for the first album. He cries, with Rose, and now Ray, when he gets signed. _Almost Legends_ is a hit. Their music shoots to the top of the charts, but Bobby is the only one to see it. 

He struggles. Starts taking medication to sleep, starts taking more, until Rose slaps them out of his hands. He lives with her, and Ray. They’re both a few years older than him, Rose by now, two years after, feeling like a sister. Ray becomes a very close friend. He knows that he’ll never replace the friends Bobby once had, but Ray tries his best.  
Bobby cries at their wedding, where he’s best man.

 _Almost Legends_ stays in the charts. Bobby tours, even though he kind of doesn’t want to. The band he’s with is great, but it’s not _his_ band.  
He’ll never have his band again. Being on stage, which once felt more natural than anything else in the world, feels wrong. The crowds sing the songs back at him, only him, and he desperately wishes Luke, Alex and Reggie were here to sing them with him.   
He doesn’t tour again. His label writes his music for him, when they realize he can’t sit down to write a song without breaking down. He makes money, a lot of it. Helps Ray and Rose buy a house, that turns out to be the one he grew up in. It’s weird, he thinks, over dinner in a completely changed dining room, how he can’t step into the vicinity of the studio without remembering the way it felt when the world came crashing down around him, but he can sit at this table and laugh and feel somewhat content.

He doesn’t give any money to their families. Emily and Mitch have ignored his attempts to contact them in the first year, so he’s stopped. The Mercer’s don’t deserve a cent of the money their son contributed to, neither do the Peters’. 

He seeks out therapy, and cries there, working through his life.  
It helps.  
He falls in love, and gets married.  
He records the lifeless songs his label writes him.  
Collects the awards for the music he made the last time he felt truly, truly happy.  
Visits his boy’s graves and puts down flowers, talks to them on their birthdays. Bobby never takes off the necklace, or the ring, never leaves the house without the guitar pick in his pocket. And time starts passing.

He lives his life, and feels happy. But still, there’s always the lingering, dull ache of his boys, who he’ll never see get married, who don’t get to hear their music on the radio, who don’t get to grow up. He still thinks of them every day, and lives, mostly so they can live on in a way too.

It’s only when he holds Carrie for the first time, when she stares up at him with big curious eyes, and wraps her tiny, tiny hand around his finger, that he knows he can live for the boys, but that he also really wants to live. That he wants to live for her, and that he can still live a life of his own, even if his boys aren’t in it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this one also goes out to all the Bobby haters, because the man lost his three best friends in the span of one night, let him fucking live.  
> (Also, read [this](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SZdvF16GeY-3rDfWmwTqUipNKfAfCZsf0NEfC2NDPOo/edit) incredible essay by Meg if you want more reasons to not dislike them.)  
> If you feel like talking/yelling, about jatp or in just general, you can find me on Tumblr as [on-irratia](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/on-irratia)  
> have a good day/ night/ rest of time! :D


End file.
